USPA Seeking Feedback on Canopy Safety Proposals

[DBCOOPER 5]

I travel a lot, visiting lots of dz's throughout the country. I have to say, I see more close calls entirely unrelated to swooping and generally related to people having their heads firmly planted up their ass and oblivious to everything around them.

Ian

[skymama 37]

Quote

Andrea, I did some analysis years ago (about 3) of all documented worldwide collisions/fatalities. Of them, OVER 50% were NON-swoopers.

Thanks, that's good to know. It seemed to me like a lot of D license holders have been involved, that's why I asked.

I think I'm probably living in a dream world thinking that dzo's will enforce anything. Say a team is in town spending a lot of money on training and they have one guy who habitually breaks the pattern. Is a dzo going to send the team packing because of one guy and lose out on all that revenue? Probably not.

How do we teach and enforce canopy awareness and get it drilled into everyone so they do get their heads out of their asses?

She is Da Man, and you better not mess with Da Man,
because she will lay some keepdown on you faster than, well, really fast. ~Billvon

[ianmdrennan 2]

The problem is (and I've been thinking about this a lot for many years) is that it's not as simplistic as people think. Even if everyone flew perfect patterns and followed directions we still have the possibility for collision because of different leg lengths, altitudes, loadings, etc.

There's things we can do to lower the risks, but overall it comes down to people being heads up, courteous, and flying pro-actively (identifying potential hazards early enough to remove them from the 'chain').

Very hard conversation to have over the internet btw
Ian

Performance Designs Factory Team